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January 12, 2014

KC Pet Project 2013 year in review

2013 was a very fun, challenging and successful year for KC Pet Project.

After a retail adoption space in the Zona Rosa Shopping Center that we had opened for the holidays proved to be amazingly successful, In February, we opted to make the space permanent. (Ouside of the space is pictured left).

We've stuck with the Playing for Life dog playgroup program and it has been amazing for the shelter and for the dogs. We have a very old, small shelter and the dogs are kept in very tight quarters. Prior to the playgroup program our dogs suffered from very high arrousal and it made the kennel area very challenging for staff, volunteers and adopters.

However, now the stress level has definitely improved. Dogs are more adoptable. Our staff knows more about the dogs' behavior than before, and the dogs are getting much-needed exercise and socialization.

In October, I was excited to be invited to speak at the Best Friends No More Homeless Pets Conference in Jacksonville. It is amazing to be in one place with so many great people who are doing so many great things in their communities. Very inspiring.

Later in October, we participated in the ASPCA Mega Match-A-Thon. For the event we adopted out 228 pets in 3 days -- that allowed us to get most of the dogs and cats in the the shelter adopted.

The year was definitely a successful one.

In total, we completed 4,516 total adoptions; 2883 dogs, 1,633 cats. We also adopted out an additional 93 pigs, goats, chickens and "others". This was a 50% increase in adoptions vs 2012 (1,503 total).

Much of this success is due to our satellite adoption center at Zona Rosa where we did more than 1600 total adoptions this year.

We returned 1,062 dogs and cats to owners (1,041 dogs, 21 cats). We also transferred another 792 dogs and 356 cats to other shelters or rescue organizations.

In total, we created 6,911 total positive outcomes for dogs and cats on the year.

We had a total intake of dogs and cats of 8,179 (5479 dogs, 2700 cats). This was a 20% increase over where we were in 2012 (1333 total animals!).

This has been a remarkable turnaround for a shelter than as recently as 2008 was killing more than 60% of the animals that came into it. Here is the trendline:

For the year, KCPP had a total Live Release Rate of 92% (using Asilomar definitions). If you include those that died, it was 89%.

We believe that based on our intake, and Live Release Rate, that we are the 4th largest open admission shelter in the country to achieve a 90% or higher live release rate.

I really, really, really hope that shelters all over the country are paying very close attention to the changes that the KC Pet Project have implemented at the KCMO City Shelter. This is a perfect example of what happens when people approach animal rescue from a much more positive aspect rather than just to look at the 'problem' locally and treat it as an illness!!!

Great job, Brent. Does your Zona Rosa outlet tend to have different types of dogs, such as smaller or better behaved dogs? The reason I ask is our state's largest open admission no kill shelter has a mall outlet, but the dogs are primarily small and highly adoptable ones.

Also, do you have any of the statistics broken out for pit bull type dogs? I recall you mentioning KC Pet Project does very well with them and would be great to show other organizations that they can save large numbers of pit bull type dogs from shelters.

We tend to try to keep a good mix of dogs at our Zona Rosa location. The goal of the location is to move animals out so we can take stress off the main shelter -- so we make a lot of efforts to move large dogs and pit bulls out of that location also. We usually try to have 5 big dogs and 5 small dogs at Zona Rosa -- and usually at least one "pit bull type".

Last year we saved about 86% of the pit bulls that came through our shelter....so we do pretty well with them. They are popular dogs, so we try to make opportunities for people to meet them. We would probably do a little better, but we have a lot of communities in the area with breed bans that make it more of a challenge than it needs to be.